Assassination of Empress Elisabeth

Artist Unknown, “The Assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Geneva by Luigi Lacheni”, 1898, Le Petit Jounal, Issued September, 25, 1898

On September 10th of 1898, anarchist Luigi Lacheni used a tapered file to fatally stab Empress Elisabeth of Austria during her visit to Geneva. She and her lady-in-waiting countess Sztáray had departed their hotel on Lake Geneva to ride a paddle steamer to Montreux at the foot of the Alps. Since Elisabeth disdained royal processions, they walked without any attendants.

On the docks in the early afternoon, Lucheni approached and stabbed Empress Elisabeth below her left breast with a wooden-handled, four-inch file, a work tool used to file the eyes of industrial needles. Badly wounded, the Empress nevertheless continued walking, supported by two other people, a distance of one hundred yards to board the departing steamer.

Aboard the steamer, Contess Sztáray noticed Elisabeth’s bleeding and notified the captain of the steamer, who ordered its return to shore. Upon landing, the Empress was carried back to the hotel on a makeshift stretcher. Two doctors pronounced Empress Elisabeth dead with an hour of the attack.

The assassin Luigi Lucheni was apprehended upon fleeing the scene; and his weapon was found the next day. Lucheni told the authorities that he was an anarchist who came to Geneva with the intention of killing any sovereign as an example for others. He was tried in October and received life imprisonment, the death penalty having been abolished in Switzweland.

Rufino Tamayo

Rufino Tamayo, “Mujer con Sandia”, 1950, Color Lithograph, Private Collection

Rufino Tamayo was an artist of Zapotec descent living in Mexico at the beginning of the 20th century. Though he fraternized with Diego Rivera and the famous Mexican muralists, their styles were too large and political for his tastes—he preferred more intimate art.

In the 1920s, Tamayo moved to New York City, where he was deeply influenced by modern art movements, especially the work of Henri Matisse, whom he met at a party.. He also taught Helen Frankenthaler while she attended The Dalton School.

Clare Leighton

Clare Leighton “Cutting” 1931, Wood Engraving, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Clare Leighton’s “Cutting” is an image from her Canadian Lumber Camp series. In this wood-engraving, the strength of the working men is conveyed through the curves of the black silhouettes, with a minimal use of white line, seen against the snowy backdrop. The landscape and figures are successfully bound together.

A particularly striking feature of this series is Clare Leighton’s depiction of the magical light of snow in the forest. This is achieved through her use of the multiple tool, which enables the gouging of several lines with a single stroke, that she began using in 1930.

David Hockney

David Hockney, “Lightning”, 1973, Lithograph and Screenprint in Colors on Wove Paper

In 1965, David Hockney worked on “A Hollywood Collection”, a suite of prints, with master printer Ken Tyler, who ran the printmaking studio Gemini Graphic Editions Limited in Los Angeles, California. Although Hockney made other prints with Gemini in the years between 1965 and 1973, “The Weather Series”, which contains the print “Lightning”, was the second major suite made there. It is in part inspired by the representation of weather in Japanese prints. This image however also suggests 18th and 19th century European depictions of landscape and weather, with overtones of the caricature style of Hogarth.

In tackling weather as a subject, David Hockney looked to 19th-century Japanese u-kioye woodblock prints by Katsushika Hokusai and impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. Both artists depicted a wide range of atmospheric and lighting conditions in serial formats—Hokusai most famously in his prints of Mount Fuji and Monet in his well-known paintings of grain stacks, and other subjects.

The “Weather Series” suite contains six prints illustrating the subjects of rain, snow, wind, mist, sun, and lightning. Hockney’s “Snow” , in which repetitive horizontal bands of tonal gradation suggest spatial recession, is most explicitly indebted to Japanese woodcuts, while the hazy silhouettes of Hockney’s “Mist” recall Monet’s painting of poplar trees on the River Epte. Hockney’s “Wind” illustrates the serial relationship between “The Weather Series” prints, as the weather elements in the “Snow”, “Mist”, “Sun”, and “Rain” prints are shown whirling in a Los Angeles gust.

Mitsuo Shiraishi

Mitsuo Shiraishi, “The Woods Between”, Etching and Aquatint on Paper

Born in 1969, Mitsou Shiraishi lives and works in Mulhouse, France. After graduating from college in Japan, he studied fine art in France at “Les Beaux Arts” in Lyon and Mulhouse. Shiraishi also received guidance at the Rémy Bucciali studio in Colmar, which gave him the necessary experience to start as a graphic artist and with etchings.

Today, he is a highly qualified printmaker, and collaborates with various international artists. Since 1994 he has also had a large number of exhibitions at biennials and galleries around the world.

Mitsuo Shiraishi’s motifs are characterized by Japanese art history and background, with sober colors and a narrative of small objects in an open landscape where perspective is often absent.